How to be an effective Flare Pyro in MvM

If you like having fun in MvM, this is the guide for you! I will teach you how to play MvM as a pyro and use nothing but your flare gun!

Table of Contents

Basics: Your role as a flare pyro.

Tactics: How to be a good flare pyro.

Upgrades: What to spend your hard earned cash on.

Primary Weapons: What flamethrower will you use when you need to?

Flare Gun: Everything you need to know about the good ol' flare gun.

Detonator: Information about the detonator.

Scorch Shot: Intel on the scorch shot.

Manmelter: Stuff about the manmelter.

Melee: That thing you use to crack robot heads open.

Canteens: Just in case.

End: The end of the guide. What else did you expect?

Basics

As a flare pyro it's important to keep your distance. It’s really simple. The only natural weakness of the pyro is that it has to get up close to kill, now you don’t need to anymore. You can stay at a distance and watch everything burn and die. Teamwork with other pyros can be important since you deal out crits with your flare gun on enemies that are already burning. Use this in your advantage to deal massive damage and quickly clean up hordes of bots. Keep an eye out for ammo packs and dispenser because flare guns, especially with upgraded fire rate and reload speed, eat lots of ammo. If there’s no scout or he's just incompetent you can fill his role as an alternative scout, since you’re not going to be killing a lot.

Tactics

-Use the special properties of different flare guns right. Extinguish teammates with the manmelter, light up whole hordes of enemies using the detonator or push back the bomb carrier with the scorch shot.

-Never try to take on the enemy on your own. You don’t deal much damage on your own and you’re only good to clean up enemies or damage them so that your teammates can clean them up.

-Don’t abuse your range. Don’t try to cross-map snipe bots only to spawn money in annoying places. Only snipe on support classes that don’t drop money, like snipers.

-If your ammo runs out don’t try to use your melee or primary, since you won’t upgrade them. Just get to the nearest ammo pack or dispenser, and if it’s really needed backfire with your flamethrower, but don’t rely on it.

Upgrades

Whatever you do, don't upgrade your melee or primary, with the only exception being airblast power. Once you’re done upgrading your flare gun upgrade your pyro. Here are the upgrades for the flare gun:

Burn Damage: I've seen many flare gun only pyros and for whatever reason they almost always upgrade this right at the start. Let me get this straight. Damage per shot is not the only stat you morons! These are the same people that upgrade nothing but damage and then wondering why they still die so fast. Damage per second is more important than damage per shot so pass on this upgrade until the rest is high enough.

Burn Duration: I don’t really understand the purpose of this upgrade, even though in the end you will deal just as much damage as with burn damage, it's better to cause as much damage as possible in a small timeframe and your team will probably kill the enemy before it’s done burning. Only upgrade this once the rest is done, it might come in handy against giants.

Reload Speed: A very important upgrade, get this before fire rate but not before health on kill. Make sure it’s maxed fast.

Ammo Capacity: Also a very essential upgrade, try to get this early on as well. It’s cheap and it adds lots of ammo.

Fire Rate: Don't get this one before reload speed. Try to keep this one up along with reload speed, because if you max reload speed without spending a single cent on fire rate you still won't fire fast. So for every reload speed upgrade get a fire rate along with it.

Health On Kill: At the very first round, get this one twice. I can't press it enough. For pretty much every weapon and every class health on kill is the single most important upgrade and you should get it as your first upgrade, instead of wasting it on damage. If you upgrade this, health won't be a concern anymore and all you have to do is check your ammo.

Primary Weapons

Since you won't really be using your primary, use one for utility. The degreaser can be very useful for quick switches and airblasting the bomb carrier. The Phlogistonator can also be a good choice to heal yourself in emergency situations. Don't upgrade your primary unless it's airblast power.

Stock Flare Gun

Simply the best choice out of all four. It has no special abilities and no drawbacks, making this the overall best. This does make it the most boring one, since there’s nothing special about it.

Detonator

Not too different from the stock. The alt-fire detonation might sound like a good thing in the beginning, but once it’s fully upgraded you will be spewing out flares like a madman and you can’t afford the precision and time anymore to detonate it and all you will notice is its big drawback. When you get overwhelmed by fast close range units like scouts you will damage yourself more often than you'd want. Another downside to this weapon, that not many people know is that unlike the stock flare gun, which deals crits on enemies that are already on fire, this will only deal mini-crits and could thus heavily lower your damage output. Pass down on this one unless you really like it.

Scorch Shot

An interesting one. Don't be demoralized by its low damage output, the fact that it can knockback and light up multiple enemies makes up for it. Using this gun you might want to upgrade burn damage a bit earlier on than with the others to make up for its low damage.

Manmelter

One thing about this gun is an advantage but also its biggest drawbacks. You'll be done upgrading it after round 1. The only available upgrades are health on kill and fire rate. Reload speed and ammo capacity is absent for obvious reasons, but I have no idea why valve thought it was a good idea to remove burn damage and burn time. This gun also has a 20% slower fire rate by default, so even with maxed out fire rate it fires extremely slow. Only use this if your team is really good. Once your gun is upgraded you can focus on turning your pyro into a fast and damage resistant monster. If you find any teammates on fire use your alt fire to extinguish him, you will get a free crit if you do.

Melee

Really not important. If you really want one, use one for utility, like the powerjack or third degree.

Canteens

Since upgrading is really cheap, you could focus on getting canteens!

Ubercharge: I would pass down on this one. Keeping you alive for 5 seconds longer isn’t really important, it’s not like you could deal much damage in that timeframe. Not really worth it.

Crits: Not too useful because you already deal crits on enemies that are on fire so in 2 shots you can kill most regular bots. Don't use it.

Ammo refill: Not really recommendable except in emergencies. Getting an ammo pack is better.

Teleport to spawn: Works pretty decent. Could save your life or can be useful if you need a quick upgrade mid-wave.

End

Congratulations on finishing reading my guide, that's quite an achievement. An even greater achievement would be to play as a flare gun only Pyro. Now go out there and mann up! Have fun!

[Goobert Monkeypants]

i like detonator because it explode the ear drums of my teammates.

[[ λ³ ] nob]

yus!

[Triste]

fler gen du bezzzzzz

[[ λ³ ] nob]

I guess, but flare gun da bes

Nothing beats pumping out those 90 damage crits.

[Triste]

Scorch Shot is for being a flare waver, stock flare gun is for being one of those machine Flare Pyros, except skilled, detonator is for mobility and psuedo-air striking, and manmelter is for being a Sniper.

[engineer gaming]

nah, it's ok

[[ λ³ ] nob]

I'm not gonna update this old as shit guide man, sorry

[engineer gaming]

Removing Sappers while the building's Engineer is dead is helpful, too.

[[ λ³ ] nob]

*grammar

[Lycona]

This guy REALLY knows his MVM tricks and tips!!! Slight lack of grammer though...